


The Rescue Blues

by icicleair



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/F, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-10
Updated: 2012-05-10
Packaged: 2017-11-05 03:21:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/401901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icicleair/pseuds/icicleair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the curse breaks, Emma saves Regina's life. Now running from those Regina hurt, they have to figure out what happens next.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rescue Blues

“ _No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.”_

Mary Wollstonecraft, ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Men’

*

It is always a curious thing whenever Regina opens her mouth to make some cutting remark and all that comes out are two words in a choked gasp.

_Help me._

What is ever more curious, is that Emma always does.

*

The third time, it sticks.

She wakes, bleary eyed and drowsy, in the passenger seat of Emma’s ridiculous Beetle, her shoulder still throbbing from when she’d fallen. Someone has made a makeshift bandage from a scarf—it looks like August’s—and draped her blazer, now with a tear on the seam where the sleeve meets the body, over her. The engine rumbles beneath them, unfamiliar highway stretching out ahead of them until it curves into the mist on the horizon.

Emma is driving, tight-mouthed and glaring out the windshield.

“Where are we?”

“Massachusetts Turnpike,” Emma says, keeping her eyes trained ahead.

“Where are we going?”

“Right now? Towards New York. After that, no idea.”

Regina panics despite herself. She has never been outside of Storybrooke, not in this world. The terms of the curse don’t even allow it. And that’s how it hits her, for what feels like the thousandth time, like a steel-toed boot in the guts: everyone remembers. The curse is broken. She had stood, waiting to be transported back to the forest, but nothing had happened, only… someone had—quite unnecessarily—tackled her to the ground.

Her glimpse of Henry’s horrified face as she closed her eyes is the last thing she remembers.

She turns with a start to the back of the car, too hopeful of seeing Henry curled up asleep, but the only thing back there is Emma’s red leather jacket, slung across the seats.

“Where’s—”

“Henry’s with David.”

David. Regina can’t remember seeing him in the crowd. He should have been there, standing right by Emma and Mary Margaret, surely, but he wasn’t. Mary Margaret with her shaking hand, stretched out towards Regina, Emma and her pleading, everyone else and their deathly silence, broken by a loud bang as Regina had closed her eyes and—

A gun. Mary Margaret had a gun and was trying to aim it at her heart. She still had a heart, of sorts, in this world.

“With David?”

“Yeah. Well, James, I guess… My fa—no, James. _Snow_ is… uh. She’s in a cell until she calms down. Henry’s safe.”

He’s safe, Regina thinks. From me. From the Evil Queen, for all her sins exposed.

“Why are you helping me?” Regina asks, and it comes out as little more than a whisper.

Emma glances sideways at her, her brow furrowed, her eyes darkened with something between anger and pity.

“I told you, didn’t I?” she says. “That’s what good people do.”

When her voice shakes Regina wonders who she is trying to convince.

*

They come to a stop after a few hours driving in stony silence, when Emma’s eyelids grow threateningly heavy. Regina would offer to drive, but her hands are still shaking and she doubts even Emma and her unwavering moral compass have it in her to trust her now.

Hours of drifting in and out of sleep have made Regina completely lose her bearings, so she hasn’t even the remotest idea of where the grotty motel Emma has found for them is. It’s not the want of ignorance that stops her from asking. She _had_ devoted _some_ of her thirty years in this world to the pursuit of knowledge, after all. In her former life she’d never been without curiosity, she’d learnt to ride, learnt to bewitch and enchant, learnt to feel the way the currents of magic pulsed through _everything,_ delicate, but in the end not so intangible. And even the killing hadn’t been _instinctual_ ; it was a skill to be studied as much as any other, methodical, practised, ordered. And, well, old habits were hard to kick, it would seem, so she studied the rules of this new world, too, the laws that governed its land and sea—and its heavens, too. So, yes, she had even mapped out the territories that she thought she would never roam, pointless enquiries into geography and distance. But once you are out there, she discovers, the names of the places, the composition of the earth beneath your feet—none of it matters.

What matters is that the place takes cash and no one looks too closely at their IDs. Emma thinks they might come after Regina, the angrier ones, the ones whose losses were entirely unrecoverable. One of the perks of having learned how to find almost anyone, Emma confesses, is knowing how best to disappear.

Up in their room, Emma insists on cleaning Regina’s wound with a first aid kit she keeps in the trunk of her car. Regina unwraps the bandages herself, and with some difficulty takes one arm out of her shirt to give Emma better access. The sudden sense of modesty takes her by surprise as she uses the other arm to wrap the shirt back around her chest.

It’s the first time she’s seen the wound. The bullet only grazed the softer part of the top of her shoulder, technically, but the gash still seems deep to her, glistening gruesomely. Emma works in silence, swabbing it firmly enough with the antiseptic. The stinging is intense and Regina winces despite herself, but as Emma continues she is surprisingly gentle.

Regina doesn’t know why Emma isn’t taking every opportunity she gets to hurt her, the woman who destroyed her life, kept destroying it, and would be still if everything hadn’t unravelled. Regina would have hurt her, were their places reversed. She _did_ , which she supposes was Emma’s problem in the first place.

Emma’s graciousness doesn’t put her at any ease, though. It just makes her more apprehensive of what there is to come.

*

After that first day, all the rest bleed together. Every couple of days they move on to the next place. They even sleep in the Beetle one night. Emma says she’s done it before, when there was no place for her to stay in Storybrooke. The accusation is there too, in her tone of voice, and it hurts even though it’s true, even though it’s not even the worst thing Regina’s done to Emma. Regina, however, is not nearly as adaptable as her saviour, and that night she remains staunchly awake as Emma dozes next to her.

(It’s not like she hasn’t thought about running from Emma, too, to save herself for certain. It’s not like she hasn’t thought of the other option either—how simple it would be, when she’s asleep and defenceless, to just reach across, put her hands to her throat. But Gold was right; it’s harder here. It’s messier, and not even Sidney is here to do her bidding now. Maybe it’s the thought of Henry that makes her dismiss the idea so quickly. Or maybe she owes Emma too much.)

There is no plan. Emma was hardly going to have ever sat down and engineered a way to protect Regina, of all people, from a world that would destroy her. Her efforts on Henry’s behalf had been haphazard enough, and, as much as Regina had endeavoured to prevent it, there had actually been love there. And Regina doesn’t have a plan because the curse _was_ the plan. There’s no plan B to happily ever after.

They don’t talk about it either. The question of what happens next is the elephant in the room, except worse because their room is invariably miniscule. But then, they don’t actually ever talk about anything at all.

*

It’s the accidental touches that hurt the most in the end, not the spaces between, not the long absences of human contact. It’s the fleeting moments where Emma’s hand accidentally brushes across hers in the tight space of Emma’s car. Emma stiffens, then withdraws. Regina’s skin burns, the place where they touched tingling with the memory.

It’s pathetic, she thinks, the way the feeling moves straight to her groin, but thinking that doesn’t make the sensation any less insistent. It has been a long time since she has been touched by someone without agenda, without malice, or, indeed, without orders. If the experience has become erotic, it has nothing to do with Emma herself, so Regina doesn’t know why she almost blushes when Emma glances over at her.

*

“It’s been over a week,” Emma says, finally, and all of a sudden they’re _talking about it_. “We’ll have to go back eventually.”

She sits on the wicker chair in the corner of the room, leant forward with her elbows on her knees. Regina is on the edge of the bed, upright, with her hands tucked beneath her thighs for warmth. Outside, the rain pours heavily, the howling winds so strong they rattle the windows in their frames.

“They’ll kill me,” she says weakly, and she alarms herself with how resigned she sounds. She had begged for mercy only days ago, but in the days between she has come too close to how she felt in the last days in her castle. Henry will never be her son again, and even if she could force him to be he’d never love her, not now that his hatred for her has been vindicated like this. He was all that mattered in this world, in the end. Without him there is no life left here for her to bargain for.

Emma’s face twists into a frown. “I won’t let that happen,” she says, averting her eyes to the floor.

“Why?” Regina asks, because she has to know.

“I _told_ you why.”

“No,” Regina says firmly, and she almost sounds like her old self. “Spare me the moralising, Emma. We both know you’re not _that_ fucking righteous.”

Emma’s eyes widen at the curse-word, as if she’s so prim herself. But then, Regina supposes she’s never been one for swearing before, even in their most intense spats. She can see why they call it _cursing_ , though—it carries a similar thrill when utilised at the right moment.

“I’m trying to do what I think is _right_ , Regina. You can believe me or not.”

Regina cannot help but scoff. “It’s funny, isn’t it?” she says. “How like your mother you are. How you both think you’re the only ones trying to do _what’s right_.”

Emma smarts at that. “How dare you?” she says, barely murmuring as she glowers up at Regina. “Don’t you dare compare what you did to my family—”

“What is it that makes you so different from me, then, Emma? Enlighten me,” Regina interrupts. “People do what they do to protect the things they love. Failing that, they act to avenge them. Ask your mother. She was the one with the gun pointed at my heart, was she not?”

“It’s not that simple,” Emma protests.

“Oh, but it _is that simple_ , and _you_ are certainly no exception, prophesied hero or not. Getting Henry is the only damn reason you fought me, and I can only assume you’re saving me now because for some reason you think he’ll thank you for it, one day. You’re just as selfish as I am. The only difference between you and me is that you fell in the party line, and I didn’t.”

Emma meets her eyes again now, visibly trying to keep her gaze steady. “You’re wrong,” she says. “It’s sad, Regina, how you’re so unwilling to see the good in people.”

Condescension runs in the family too, Regina notes. She resists the urge to roll her eyes, just about.

“Well, if it’s not for Henry then who does it benefit? I certainly doubt you _love_ me, and if it’s vengeance then I’m not sure who you’re punishing by keeping me alive.”

Emma blinks slowly, sighing. “Or maybe not everyone is like you,” she says, but she’s certainly sounded more convincing before. When she tries to stare Emma down, there’s something about her countenance that makes Regina think she’s getting to her. It’s not as satisfying as it might have been when they were playing their little back and forth in Storybrooke, this small victory, but it’s not exactly horrible either.

When the penny drops, Regina is amazed at her own stupidity.

“Or maybe you’re more like me than you realise,” she says, and she can’t keep the astonishment out of her voice. Emma looks startled by her change in tone. “It _is_ vengeance. Your only satisfaction is my suffering, isn’t it? And I need to be alive for that, don’t I?”

Emma hadn’t saved her. She had just overruled her mother’s sentence with her own. And this little road trip was, what? Waiting for the angry mob to cool off so she could serve them up a fiercer verdict?

Emma’s eyes darken, and it’s nearly terrifying, the look of rage in her eyes. She doesn’t say anything, but then she doesn’t need to.

“How very noble of you, Emma Swan, to presume yourself both judge and jury in the place of everyone else,” Regina says. “I should have seen it sooner, shouldn’t I? Your take on the judicial system has always been… liberal.”

“Fuck you,” Emma says, but her eyes spark with something. Guilt for some of her behaviour? Not incredibly likely. But it’s an acknowledgement of a sort, and that will do for now. Still, if Emma means for her words to sting, she has failed.

Regina laughs. “Hurts, doesn’t it? Discovering those shades of grey, that goodness pure and true does not exist. Not even in you.”

“You sentenced thousands of people to suffer for all eternity for the mistake of an innocent child. I am _not_ like you.”

Regina sighs, balking inwardly at the mere suggestion that Snow White was ever _innocent_. “If thinking that is what helps you sleep at night,” she says. “But your mother deserved everything she got from me, Emma. Maybe not everyone else, I’ll concede that much. But _she_ was selfish and a liar and that cost me _everything_.”

“Your mother manipulated her.”

“Don’t you dare even _mention_ that woman,” Regina spits. “But I guess that’s what she _would_ tell you, isn’t it? My _mother_ could only manipulate what weaknesses were already there, Emma. I know that better than _anyone_. That’s what your mother was: _weak_. Don’t you dare try to use _my mother_ to absolve Snow White of anything. She wanted a mother of her own and she was willing to risk my happiness entirely to get it. I _told_ her not to tell my mother anything and she did it anyway. That’s the truth that everyone is always so damn blind to. That even the pure, beautiful Snow White is as capable as I am of terrible things. And so are you.”

And with that Emma is on her feet rushing towards her, pushing her backwards across the bed with her hands wrapped around Regina’s throat. She doesn’t tighten her grip to exert any pressure when she realises that Regina is not fighting back, but frowns down at her as she instead moves her head so the full extent of her neck is bared to Emma’s hands. It’s funny how, as irritating or even dangerous as Emma’s outbursts have always been—chainsaws, punches, and so on—Regina always likes her most in these moments. Respects her at least. It’s wondrous, what dropping that holier-than-thou façade does for her.

“Go on,” Regina says. “Kill me.”

Even Regina is uncertain as to whether she’s mocking her or challenging her, but either will do.

Emma takes her hands away, then, fingers brushing lightly over Regina’s skin as she moves. Her touch is disturbing, somehow, in its softness, and as fleeting and light as the movement might have been, Regina feels it everywhere.  Any temptation to gloat, any attempt at provocation, dies in her throat at the sight of Emma above her, still straddling her thighs and peering down at her with an inscrutable expression.

It’s as if Regina’s body is not her own when she sits up and presses her lips against Emma’s, close-mouthed but still furious, far from chaste. She wants to wipe that look—whatever it is—off her face: her downturned mouth, her stupid big round sad eyes.

Emma pulls away almost instantly, her weight shifting uncomfortably down Regina’s thighs. Regina expects her to say something, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t make any further kind of motion, just remains static there, on top of Regina. The sudden sound of her exhaling moments later tells Regina she had been holding her breath.

If Emma’s bursts of passion make her almost respectable to Regina, then this, this _nothing_ she gives her now makes her purely detestable. She can feel the rage bubbling within her, rising upwards, the familiar ache in her bones that has fuelled her every action for years now. But the rage doesn’t blind her anymore—she’s so used to it that it almost clears her mind, makes _plotting_ much easier anyway. When she kisses Emma again, it is much more deliberate. Her intent shows as her tongue flits outwards and she leans forwards, snaking a hand behind Emma’s neck and bunching a fist tightly in her hair.

Emma whimpers, and the response is no less satisfying for having been forced from her. When Emma’s mind has finally caught up with what is happening, her eyes fly open (interesting, Regina thinks, that she’d closed them at all) and Regina can tell from the dangerous glint in her eyes that this is either going to end in sex or violence. Or both, it’s not as if the two are mutually exclusive, after all.

The anticipation of Emma’s next move has reached the warmth between Regina’s legs, but even through the intensity of the moment she still manages to hope that Emma doesn’t choose to take the extent of her arousal _personally_. This sexually charged undercurrent is about a lot of things: none of them Emma. Still, when Emma leans into the kiss—the momentum pushing Regina onto her back again as Emma turns her attention to Regina’s neck, trailing her tongue down from beneath her ear to just above her collar bone where she sucks gently—the moan that escapes from Regina is guttural.

Emma hums a small sound of satisfaction against Regina’s neck. She had thought that Emma’s compliance in this turn of events was about meeting Regina at every move she made, about not backing down from a fight, whatever form it took, but there’s a hunger in the way her mouth descends, following her fingers as they undo the first few buttons of her shirt, that says something else entirely. It’s enough to awaken something in Regina—the instinct for self-preservation, perhaps—and her need to dominate begins to battle it out with her need for Emma’s fingers to stop skirting over the buttons that trap Regina in her clothes and just _get on with it_. It’s a pleasant discovery, Regina finds, when the former wins. With the element of surprise on her side, she forces herself upwards and over, so Emma falls on the bed with her legs still either side of Regina.

“Oof,” Emma says, and Regina withholds a laugh. “I should have expected that,” Emma adds, but she doesn’t sound entirely perturbed, and she meets Regina’s eyes with a look that can only be an invitation.

The first order of things is to remove those absurdly tight jeans, Regina decides. Her ridiculous lace-up boots have thankfully already been conquered and cast aside by Emma as soon as they checked in. She unbuttons the jeans quickly with deft fingers and, with some effort (they are somehow astonishingly even tighter than they appear), tugs them off.

“Fuck,” Emma says, astutely, as her skin is exposed to the cold air of the motel room—adequate heating does _not_ , apparently, come as standard. “Keep everything else on, yeah?” she murmurs. The cold has obviously brought with it the reality of what they’re doing, and she colours a little with embarrassment.

Regina agrees, frowning a little. She would suggest going under the covers, if this were anywhere else, but she doesn’t suppose that Emma wants to expose herself to whatever unhygienic wonders are waiting inside them any more than she does. She doesn’t listen too closely to that tiny sinking feeling in her gut that’s a little too close to disappointment. If she wants Emma naked, it’s about exposing her, being the one in control while she’s vulnerable, not anything more than that. Regina _needs_ to feel in control again, after having it gradually slip away from her over the past year only to be relinquished entirely to Emma for the past week or so.

It is certainly _not_ about Emma, or about her breasts, or about running fingers across her smooth skin, or the possibility of trailing her tongue across the sensitive flesh at her—

Well, it’s not about any of that.

She hooks a finger in the waistband of Emma’s boyshorts (of course, Regina thinks, _boyshorts_ ), running it from one hip to the other feeling the soft cotton on one side and the radiating warmth of Emma’s stomach on the other. It’s not much, but she needs _some_ way to tease, if only for a second, and judging from the way Emma’s nostrils flare it’s working a little.

“Please,” Emma whispers, but she still isn’t as desperate as Regina would like.

“What?” she taunts.

Emma hasn’t the patience to be tormented to any degree, it would seem, grabbing Regina’s hand and forcing it in the direction she so clearly desires. The move may lack elegance, but Regina appreciates the sentiment and complies, sliding her hand into Emma’s underwear and meeting the warmth that awaits her.

Emma’s breath hitches at the contact, and she adjusts her hips to press against Regina’s hand harder.

“Hurry up,” she says, covering her eyes with one arm, the other down by her side.

“Charming,” Regina says, and cringes when she remembers the association. Still, she isn’t going to disappoint, and if it’s immediacy Emma wants then her wish is Regina’s command. And, really, with Emma so _ready to go,_ as it were, once Regina’s fingers have found the spot, getting her there is pretty straightforward. The whole thing lacks Regina’s usual flair of course, both of them with most of their clothes still on, a chill in the air, but so does everything about this situation.

Emma doesn’t seem to mind, though, so Regina makes the best of it. In the end, when Emma comes quietly in gasps, it’s not the lack of ceremony that wells the emptiness in her chest.

Emma uncovers her eyes and stares up at Regina with another unsettling look that Regina can’t quite figure out, but seems wounding all the same. Regina undoes it easily by dragging a finger along Emma’s centre as she withdraws her hand and then takes the finger in her mouth, tasting her. It’s not exactly the first time Regina has had to cover for the threatening prickling behind her eyes with bravado.

“You may need a change of underwear, dear.”

Emma frowns—and, ah, _there_ is a facial cue Regina understands—and as she sits up Regina moves instinctually away from her, allowing her room to shuffle off the bed. Regina watches as she marches towards the bathroom, sweeping her jeans up off the floor as she goes, and slams the door. The sound of the lock runs right through her.

Regina is left to deal with her own need alone. Of course, Emma could come back in at any time, but Regina suspects they are past modesty now. She has surrendered in so many other ways already; it seems pointless clinging onto her sense of shame.

She doesn’t wish that her own hands were Emma’s as she presses two fingers inside. She doesn’t wish that at all.

*

When she wakes, Emma is nowhere to be seen.

Regina goes to the window. The rain has gone, and the spot where the Beetle had been parked is empty.

How curious it is, when she finds she cannot breathe.

*

Regina is sat motionless, as if paralysed, in the chair when Emma returns. She had been stupid to think she wouldn’t, Regina realises, and feels embarrassed by how she had reacted. As if Emma would have given her her freedom over something as senseless as what had happened the night before. Although, it wouldn’t have been freedom, really. Regina would have been left with nothing in the world to her name and nowhere to go. By this point she is a prisoner, or she is nothing.

“I didn’t think you’d come back,” she finds herself admitting as Emma eyes her curiously from the doorway.

Emma sighs. “I got us some stuff,” she says, throwing a full plastic bag at Regina. “And we needed more cash. I had to go a little out of the way to get it, just in case.”

Regina pours the contents of the bag onto the bed. Clothes. Cheap ones, sweatpants and t-shirts.

“I thought we were going back.”

Emma shakes her head. “I need more time,” she says.

“For what?”

“To _think_ ,” she barks, squeezing her eyes shut and breathing deeply. “I don’t know what to do with you. I don’t know what to tell them.”

The victims should never be the ones to sentence the perpetrators, Regina thinks, but she doesn’t say it. It’s not exactly an ideology she has ever lived by, and maybe it’s an entirely useless one here where there are no impartial third parties to stand in on their behalf.

“Tell them the truth, whatever you think that is, and let them do with it what they will,” she says, burying her face in her hands, because she is so _tired_. She is tired of never winning and she is tired of trying to. If it takes one final defeat, even if they make her watch as they tear her human heart from her chest, even if they shoot her and there’s no one there to push her to safety this time, even if it’s Henry’s finger on the trigger, she has no fervour for battle left in her. They have won and all she can do is kneel and take it.

“You _ruined_ my _life_.”

“I know.”

“You need to answer for every single person you’ve hurt. _You need to be sorry_.”

“I am. Not in the way you want. But I am.”

“You need to be _punished_ for what you’ve done, Regina,” Emma continues, and her voice is strangled and broken.

“I know that.”

“Then why don’t _I_?”

When Regina looks up she sees Emma’s face, contorted and blotchy. She is crying.

“What?”

“How did I let you get in my head?” she asks, and she looks like a bewildered child. Regina thinks of how she never got the chance to be one for real. The guilt spikes in her chest. “I can’t do this. I can’t be the saviour anymore. I never wanted this. It was supposed to end when the curse broke, but it’s never going to, is it? Whatever happens, I am going to have to live with it forever, and nothing seems to be the right choice.”

“Let someone else choose.”

“But I’d be letting it happen. If they kill you or make you suffer, then you’re _right_. We’re all just as bad as you. But anything else isn’t enough.”

“I can’t help you,” Regina says, and it terrifies her how much she wishes she could.

Then neither of them says anything for a while. Emma stands near the door, breathing deeply and staring at Regina as though the answer is written on her somewhere and if she just stares long enough it will reveal itself to her, and Regina can’t bear being under such scrutiny. All she can do is stare at her hands.

Then she hears the padding of Emma’s feet against the carpet as she wanders over to her. She sees Emma’s hands first, as they reach out and pull hers from her lap. Emma, dropped to her own knees, presses herself against Regina’s. Letting go of her hands, she reaches out and cups Regina’s face. She isn’t gentle, but she isn’t rough either.

“Is this what it felt like?” she asks.

“What?”

“When you did it. All of it. Like there’s no choice but there are too many choices. Like nothing is enough because it won’t undo what happened, but not doing anything is worse.”

Regina’s silence says everything.

“How did you live with it? The choice you made.”

“I had to.”

Emma kisses her then. It doesn’t have the aggression that the previous night had. It’s deep and warm and tender and not the kind of kiss she deserves, but if anyone stops it it won’t be her. She hates herself for the hunger with which she kisses back, it’s embarrassing and desperate, but it’s the only thing in the world she knows how to do right now.

“Are you sure you want to do this again?” Regina asks when they have to pull apart for air.

Emma shushes her, moving her hands to the hem of her shirt and sliding them under. Regina gasps at her touch.

“Can we… for just one night… can we just pretend we don’t exist?”

Regina smiles weakly.

“Okay.”


End file.
